Here, in Poland, its mostly the kids bringing infections home. I usually expect at least one week off due to sickness in early fall, and then proper flu (taking around 10 days) in december/january. This is the norm.
I remember a stark contrast with the UK where, I guess due to the climate, the kids dont get sick at all.
So you have plenty of kids sneezing and coughing as if they were in a final stage of tuberculosis and there was no tomorrow.
They are taught to sneeze in their arm (and they do it) but not coughing. So they cough as of it was the olympics again and there would be a prize for the one who coughs further.
For the record, I have two children (now students) so they did their share of spreading diseases (to home and at school)
I have young school-aged kids, and kids are cesspools of filth and pestilence.
Im hybrid with days in office counted and a performance consideration. When I have used by WFH days then get sick, I 100% take it to the office.
I dont know if this surpasses the effect of fewer people in the office, but I think it is possible.
Do you have any reference explaining this? As far as I know, respiratory viruses (flu, RSV, COVID-19) are difficult to develop immunity for because of their rapid evolution cycles. The quote above sounds counter-intuitive to me.
This gist of what I remember was that viruses mutate some "percentage" of their envelope on average annually. It's somewhat predictable for more than six months into the future, which is how flu vaccines are developed and manufactured ahead of time before the next flu season.
This unpredictability accumulates, so after three years the viruses become nearly totally unpredictable, not just to vaccine manufacturers, but also to the human immune system. If you get the flu every year, each year the new flu might only be 30% different than the one before, so you have some lingering immunity to it. If you catch it every year, you'll generally get mild cases and refresh your immunity each time. If you skip three years, the viruses become 66% different, which might be sufficient to evade your immune system and give you a really bad case.
There were also a few coincidental compounding issues recently, such as particularly virulent strains of viruses such as RSV going around.
I take flu vaccine shots once a year and didn't get flu since years. Same for COVID but they don't work, I still get it at least twice a year with bad symptoms
But I guess without a serious study my belief is hard to check & validate.
being from a city where owning personal vehicle is too expensive and impractical, and where public transportation is "good enough" and encouraged, it is the act of commuting, whether work or not, that would have given me more anxiety.
this is what living in the city is though. i would not choose a way of working based on this alone.
I've worked nearly 100% from home for the last 5 years. My wife works for a major bank, and has had a hybrid work arrangement for all that time. Employees there are required to spend 5 days in the office per fortnight. This requirement is strictly enforced. For whatever reason, we spend about 3 months of every year battling viruses that spread around her office. Every few months someone brings COVID to her office. Flu season is an absolute nightmare. I'm not sure what has changed in the wider human biome, but I don't remember respiratory viruses being something I needed to worry about prior to COVID. I'd only ever had the flu once before in my life, but now we get it multiple times a year. I've had three severe respiratory viruses this year alone, and I'm a healthy, fit, non-immunocompromised person. Anecdotally, other people are experiencing the same thing. Is this something that affects other people here?